


barren trees and fields of snow

by postalcoast



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: John and Arthur find the Arabian together, M/M, MorstonWeek2020, cuddling for warmth, then they rub it in Dutch's face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25891444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postalcoast/pseuds/postalcoast
Summary: Like many rumors and myths spread throughout meaningless chatter, John had told Arthur about the white Arabian that had been spotted out in the Grizzlies West.
Relationships: John Marston/Arthur Morgan, mentioned Abigail Roberts Marston/Sadie Adler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58
Collections: Morston Week 2020





	barren trees and fields of snow

**Author's Note:**

> look ok u know dutch would've been Big Mad that either John or Arthur had a horse like The Count, I'm js
> 
> title comes from White Foxes by Susanne Sundfør

Against his better judgment, Arthur follows John out back towards Ambarino, to Lake Isabella.

Like many rumors and myths spread throughout meaningless chatter, John had told Arthur about the white Arabian that had been spotted out in the Grizzlies West. 

John had told him over the campfire back at Horseshoe Overlook, late at night after most of the gang had retired to their tents and bedrolls. He had told him the horse was just like the Count - fast, agile, breathtakingly beautiful. 

“You really wanna go back out in that snow, Marston?” Arthur had laughed, taking John’s words with a grain of salt. He’d noticed the way John’s nose had wrinkled in frustration, at himself and Arthur’s lack of willingness to entertain the idea any further. “I’m really startin’ to believe you left half your brains back on that mountain.”

“A fella back at the stables told me he would give me twelve hundred dollars for it,” John had said, leaning forward and dropping his voice like he was afraid someone would hear. Arthur could’ve drawn him like that, face lit up from the glow of the fire, stubbornly insisting that yet another harebrained idea of his was a good one. “It’d be worth survivin’ the snow just for that.”

Arthur hadn’t been convinced then, and he wasn’t sure he was fully convinced even now.

The two of them ride together through the undisturbed snowfall, northwest of Lake Isabella, all around them blinding white.

Arthur wants to shoot some remark about searching for a white horse in the snow, but instead, he says, “Dutch is gonna be pissed if an’ when we bring this horse back to camp.” 

“How d’you figure?”

“This horse is awful similar to The Count, ain’t it?” Arthur calls out, raising his voice against the winds. “You think Dutch is just gonna be  _ alright _ with one of us having a horse like his?”

“I ain’t too worried about it,” John calls back, and this surprises Arthur. “He spent ten minutes berating me over buying a new saddle for Old Boy the other day, said I should’ve put that money towards the camp funds. Let him be pissed.”

***

After hours of futile searching for John’s rare Arabian horse, an even chillier nightfall persuades them to take shelter in an abandoned cabin near the lake.

Arthur checks to make sure the cabin is, infact, abandoned, before the two of them hitch their horses and head on inside. 

There’s definitely some evidence that one must’ve lived in this cabin - a few candles melted down in some bottles above the fireplace, some forgotten food left behind on the dining table, and an unmade bed shoved into one of the corners of the room.

“We’ll head back out and keep lookin’ for this horse of yours in the morning,” Arthur makes quick work of searching the cabin for food or any other useful supplies. He sees John out of the corner of his eye inspecting a bread roll on the table, and going by the hard knock it makes on the table when John bangs it against it - it’s almost frozen solid. “No use trying to find the damn thing in the dark.”

“Which one of us is gettin’ the bed?” Arthur hears John ask from behind him when he moves over to search the cabinets next to the sink, the wooden planks groaning under his boots. 

“We both are,” Arthur glances over his shoulder to see that apparently John has already claimed the bed, seeing as he’s plopped himself down on it.

John looks up at him wearily - a day spent out in the bitter cold searching for a horse that might not even be around having taken any motivation to start up an argument, and shrugs.

Arthur turns his attention back to the cabinet, having found a few opened tonics and a cigarette card, and shoves all of it in his satchel before moving on to the next one.

“Awful small for two grown men, don’t you think?” John says. There’s a scraping sound like John’s checking the bedside table, doing his part in searching for anything of use. 

Arthur turns, rolling his eyes, and walks over to the armoire near the bed. “You could always take the  _ floor _ , Marston.”

John regards the wooden planks with a frown before turning his attention back to Arthur. “I’m good.”

***

Arthur feels a lot better after they get the fireplace going, and he and John sit in front of it, having a couple of cans of cold beans for dinner. It’s still damn near freezing in the small space of the cabin, but at least now, Arthur can feel his fingers.

John is the first to climb back onto the bed, scooting over against the wall and making room for Arthur beside him. Arthur stays up for a few minutes longer, still sitting in front of the fire, making a quick journal entry and leaving a blank page to sketch the horse onto if and when they find it.

“You writin’ about me?” John asks from the bed. 

Arthur glances over at him to see he’s already got the thin blanket provided with the bed wrapped around him, feet pulled up to his chest in a fetal position. “Yes.”

“Anything good?” 

_ Perhaps my own confidence in John or my own stupidity has led me out here in the middle of a snowstorm once again. We searched all day and still, no horse. Still, John says it’s worth searching for, and for some unknown reason, I believe him. I can’t tell who’s the bigger fool - him, for marching out into the snow on a whim, or me, for following him out in it. Can’t let him go and get himself eaten by wolves again. _

Arthur closes the journal and stuffs it away back inside his satchel. “Just how big a fool you are for getting us out in this mess.”

“You’ll thank me when you got six hundred dollars in your pocket,” John says, and the bed creaks when Arthur joins him on it.

“I thought you were keepin’ it,” Arthur takes off his hat and satchel, placing it on the bedside table, and lies down on his back beside John.

John scoots over a bit more as if he’s afraid Arthur doesn’t half enough room, but he doesn’t seem to be willing to give up that blanket any time soon. “Wouldn’t be very fair to you. Comin’ up here with me for no reason.”

“Ain’t for no reason,” Arthur turns his head to look at him, and he feels himself smiling. “Besides, I kinda wanna see the look on Dutch’s face when we bring it back to camp.”

John’s smiling too, now, from what little Arthur can see peeking out of the blanket. 

Arthur reaches out, tugging at the material, prying it out of John’s grasp just enough so it covers both of them. “That is if you don’t let me freeze to death.”

***

Arthur wakes up a couple of hours later with the fireplace down to mere embers and John’s arm thrown over his torso. Arthur’s lying on his side, now, and John’s entire body is pressed up against his back. 

He can feel John’s breath against the back of his neck and his hand clings to the fabric of Arthur’s shirt. Even with the added body heat and the extra layers of his winter jacket and the blanket, Arthur still feels cold. 

He must’ve made some movement, some sort of indication that he was awake, because he can feel John lift his head up off the shared pillow behind him. 

“Arthur,” John’s voice is quiet, a bare whisper against the howling winds outside. “You awake?”

“I am now.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Arthur sighs, and he can see his breath leave his mouth in a small puff of smoke. “Ain’t your fault.”

“Can I ask you somethin’?” The bed creaks again and Arthur can see John lift himself up on his elbow in his peripheral.

Arthur turns over, on his back, and then on his other side so he’s facing John. He’s almost taken off guard by how close John’s face is, close enough that their noses are practically touching, and yet John makes no movement to withdraw himself from Arthur’s space.

“Why did you come up here with me?” John takes this as an affirmative, probably knowing Arthur well enough that the other man would just wave him off and fall back asleep.

“You asked me to,” Arthur answers almost automatically. John makes a face like that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.

“I’ve asked you to do a lot of things,” John says, and this is true. Arthur could name off many ridiculous ideas that John’s had in the past, mostly all of them some harebrained scheme that would end up with the both of them dead.

John keeps looking at him like he’s searching for the real meaning in Arthur’s face, in his eyes. The sudden abundance of attention has Arthur glancing away out the window above John’s head. “I know.”

John frowns at this, but he lets Arthur find the words he’s looking for. 

“Abigail would kill me if I let something happen to you.” 

“Abigail ain’t concerned with what happens to me anymore, you know that,” John says, and he sounds almost frustrated with the amount of effort he’s having to put up with trying to dig this desired answer out of Arthur. “Known that for a while now, ever since Sadie came along.”

“Well, what d’you want me to say, John?” Arthur’s voice mirrors John’s frustration, and just as he’d feared, John answers him.

“Say you did it because you  _ wanted _ to,” John says, and he still sounds frustrated, but he’s staring at Arthur now like he’s staring straight into his soul. Arthur guesses that he must be because that’s the only way he could’ve found the right answer. “Because you  _ want _ to be around me and every moment you spend with me isn’t some sort of  _ chore _ .”

Arthur opens his mouth to reply, but John beats him to it. 

“Why d’you think I ask you to every job I do? To go out drinkin’ all the time with me?” John  _ wants  _ Arthur around him, this he has known for quite some time. Maybe to the same extent, Arthur wants the same for John, too. 

And it’s the truth, Arthur does want to be around John. It’s the reason he stays up late at night with John around the fire back at camp, the reason he’s started having his coffee out away from the rest of the gang, staring out at the sunrise with John by his side.

He hadn’t quite been able to put it into words yet, but here John is, defining it perfectly. Arthur followed John back up to Ambarino because he wanted to, because it was he who couldn’t bear something happening to John again. 

The truth is, Arthur would let every second of the rest of his life be wasted with John if he had the option. That, he isn’t sure really  _ how  _ to say, so he reaches out, grabbing ahold of John’s shirt and pulls him into a kiss - hoping maybe that could say it for him.

John responds immediately, wrapping a hand around the back of Arthur’s head and kissing him back with just as much intensity.

Tomorrow, Arthur will fill that blank page in with the image of John sleeping beside him, and he’ll write that perhaps this trip to Lake Isabella wasn’t just about finding this horse.

If they find it at all.

***

The snow is bright and freezing come morning, and despite every minor doubt Arthur had in his mind, they actually find the damn thing. 

Wild, out in the middle of the endless snow - like a flower surviving a hard storm, still standing in soggy dirt.

John dismounts first, doesn’t even bother hitching up Old Boy, trudging through the snow after the horse like he’s hypnotized by it.

“Marston!” Arthur dismounts and hitches his horse up to a nearby tree, does the same for Old Boy since John’s obviously well and forgot about him. “Hold up, you can’t just walk up to it, goddamn it-”

John shushes him. Sharp and irritated. Apparently, he knows what he’s doing.

Although Arthur has half a mind to give into him even more, he doesn’t say anything further and lumbers after John and this horse.

The horse is nothing and everything Arthur expected it to be. Beautiful, gleaming white coat just like The Count’s, and he can’t help himself for blindly wandering up to it just as John is.

When their several feet away from it, John calls out to it, making sure the horse sees them, and John stops in his tracks. He even throws out an arm to halt Arthur beside him, misses the look Arthur shoots him, entirely.

The horse is obviously irritated by their presence, but the two of them know to wait until the horse is calm until they approach it any further so they won’t spook it. And eventually, John is the one to mount.

Arthur quickly backs up and out of the way as John hangs on to the animal, shifting his body forward and backward to accustom its movements. He knows what he’s doing, and if anything this is the proof.

Once he gets the horse calm enough, John rides it back to camp, Arthur and Old Boy in tow.

It takes John some convincing not to sell it, not yet, anyway.

The look of pure astonishment muddled with a kindling rage Dutch wears when he lays eyes upon the horse when John hitches it right next to The Count has Arthur feeling proud of John. The fact that John brushes on past him, like he doesn’t have any clue as to what Dutch is staring at, makes Arthur want to kiss him again.

And he does, within the confines of John’s tent, and it feels more like a celebration than anything Arthur’s ever experienced before.


End file.
